We won. Unlike my first mission, the staging room after the fight buzzed with excitement. I half expected Gorb to climb on top of a table and relate the moment of its victory in grand fashion, but then I remembered that the weird alien creature couldn’t speak. Regardless, everyone knew I had played an integral part in the victory, and the congratulatory praise was overwhelming.
I’d never won anything before in my life. Nothing major, at least. I played on my high school’s golf team, but I was terrible. Nothing in my past really compared. Grinning from ear to ear, I found Crunch and gave him a high five.
“Hey, what else do I get for winning?” I asked. My membership card still showed level one, only three experience points, and the same amount of credits as before.
“Oh, right. I keep forgetting how new you are.” Crunch pointed to the exit that would take us all back to the Hive. “Once you walk through the door, all the experience points you earned in the battle will be vested, as they say, and you should gain a level or two. They get delayed in the instruction battles until your teacher releases the points, but in normal battles like this one, just walk through the door. And you’re still level one, right?”
“Yeah,” I said with a nod. “Think I’ll hit level two?”
“Level one to two only takes ten experience, so that’s easy. Then the number you need goes up by ten each level. It kind of makes it exponential, I think, but the amount you receive from the high tier missions is nuts. Hercules pulls in a couple million from every mission. You’ll get there soon enough.”
“And what about credits? I already got paid for the bounty contract, but do I get any more for winning with the team?” Remembering the compass I had found, I checked my pockets as well, but it wasn’t there. It seemed that objects collected in the field didn’t come back when the mission ended. Oh well.
Crunch laughed. “Desperate for those credits, I take it. You’ll get a full share on top of your bounty. The mission paid out thirty-five thousand, so split it nine ways. I’m bad at math.”
Without a calculator, I wasn’t going to do the math either. Maybe my high school teachers were finally right after all, and I wouldn’t be able to go through life with a calculator in my pocket. I stepped through the doorway, and my membership card flashed blue a few times.
Fourteen thousand, two hundred eighty-eight credits. Not bad.
A lot of my other stats had increased as well.
Level: 4 Medic
Experience: 19/40
Health: 53/53
Aether: 103/103
Armor: 2
Physical: 6
Insight: 7
Knowledge: 13
Healing: 15
Technology: 12
Constitution: 5
Elemental: 0
Psyonic: 0
Glamor: 10
My health and aether had both risen by one per level, and then my physical, insight, knowledge, and healing stats were each a point higher. An increase of only one wasn’t much, but I was still proud of the progress. I needed to hit the gym again to see if I was any better at the exercises.
I grabbed a seat in the Hive as a blinking notification in my vision told me about a slew of new skills.
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Congratulations! You have unlocked <
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Congratulations! You have unlocked <
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Congratulations! You have unlocked <
Congratulations! You have unlocked <
Congratulations! You have unlocked <
I wondered if other Medics learned healing and damaging abilities as they leveled. Maybe being a pacifist would mean that I would get twice the amount of healing abilities since I could never learn anything offensive. Or maybe it would just mean that I got screwed and only unlocked half of what everyone got. At some point in my near future, a trip to the massive library was in order to study as much as I could about the system and everything else. Surely there were famous Medics akin to Hercules’s level of fame, and their exploits would be written about in books.
Rising from my seat, I was just about to hit the retail area to spend some new credits when a familiar voice stopped me.
“Where the fuck were you, Stephanie?” Carrie called from across the Hive. The whole team was exiting one of the training classrooms, and they all gave me death stares. Only Carrie and Carl actually came over.
“Hey guys. I actually—”
“You’re supposed to be the most important person on the team! I can’t believe you ditched us on the second day.” Carrie stood with her hands on her hips and gave me her best entitled Karen look.
“Can I talk now?”
Neither of them responded. Carl just shrugged.
“I took a bounty for a pretty high level mission, and we won. I’m level four, and I think I’m kind of rich now. I’m not exactly sure,” I explained as calmly as I could.
Carrie’s eyes went wide. “Oh shit, you’re level four?” Her mood instantly changed, and she took a seat across from me.
Carl grabbed an unused tablet and sat down as well. After a few button presses, he showed me the tablet. “You’re higher rank than all of us now. Congrats!” He sounded genuinely happy for my progress.
“So… what did you guys do? Classroom stuff?” I asked. I hated being the center of attention when just a minute ago the whole team was pissed at me.
Carrie nodded. “Yeah, it was actually pretty boring, but we learned a lot about how everything works and watched a ton of footage from famous missions.”
“You should have seen this one,” Carl cut in. “It was back when Hercules was only in the twenties. He was piloting a tank and angled it on a real steep hillside, then waited for his Rogue AI buddy to send the wrong coordinates to a helicopter. The thing flew right into view, and Hercules blasted it with a single shot. Six enemy kills at once. It was sick. Tied for third in the League for kills with a single shot.”
“Damn, that guy really is a legend, isn’t he?” I couldn’t go anywhere in the League without seeing his exploits on display or hearing people drool over him like he was the next big pop star.
Carl flipped through a few more screens on his tablet. “Speaking of which, he won his mission. He should be back any minute.”
I hadn’t noticed until I looked, but the Hive had gotten packed. Tons and tons of both humans and aliens had crowded into the room. Nearly every seat was taken, and at least a few hundred were standing.
Then a door opened with an actuated hiss of gas, and the whole place erupted in cheers. Hercules really was a celebrity. The entire Hive clapped and cheered, and more than one champagne bottle—or at least I assumed from the sugary smell and cascade of pale liquid that it was champagne—was cracked up in his honor. A few moments later, the rest of Hercules’s team made their way into the Hive, and things started to die down a notch or two. It was painfully obvious that everyone else on the team played second fiddle.
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“Honestly, that guy seems kind of insufferable,” I said to Carrie.
“What?”
It was impossible to hear anything over the tumult.
Eventually, Hercules stood up on one of the tables, and the room quieted to dead silence.
“Ladies and gentlemen, esteemed foreign lifeforms, and anyone I missed: thank you,” Hercules began in a very lofty British accent. “When I arrived here on my beloved Archon-6, you welcomed me with open arms. That was a long time ago, and I have strived to repay your overwhelming kindness with victory in the battlefield ever since. I merely hope that I have earned a sliver of your unnecessary gratitude.”
The Hive erupted again with cheers.
I shook my head and rolled my eyes. My suspicions were correct: the guy was a tool. He was a cocky jackass, the kind of guy who knew he was better than everyone else and made a game out of pretending to be a peasant. He reminded me a rich high school bully combined with the team quarterback. I hated those guys in high school, and I was pretty sure they all hated me as well.
Someone handed Hercules a champagne flute, and he raised it for a toast. “But alas, we shan’t celebrate before remembering our fallen brothers and sisters.” He tipped his glass, and a few drops spilled out onto the table. “Tonight we drink to honor the eight fallen comrades who can drink with us no longer. Their names will be forever immortalized in these hallowed halls, and we should remember them here now as well: Geoff, Marrissa, Katrin, Bartholomew, Edgar, Amul, Krita, and Jub’thranothox. May they—”
The last name caught me off guard, and I laughed. It was just a single laugh, but everyone heard it. Instantly, my face turned beet red.
Hercules cleared his throat. His eyes bored directly into mine, and I shrank in my seat. “May they rest in peace among the stars,” Hercules finished. He poured out another few drops, then drank his glass in a single swig.
Thankfully, the room’s attention finally lifted from me and returned to their hero, though my embarrassment didn’t wane.
“Nice one,” Carrie said, though she wasn’t serious.
Carl was aghast. He didn’t say anything, just stood up, left the tablet, and made a beeline for the door.
“Hey, let’s get out of here,” I said. “I have a ton of credits to spend. I wanna do some shopping. Want to join me?”
Carrie stood up. “You’re buying me something cool to make up for ditching class.”
“Deal.”
As everyone around us scrambled to get closer to Hercules and numerous mentions of an epic afterparty were made, the two of us squeezed through the press until we finally emerged in a hallway. The air was noticeably cooler without so many bodies, and I breathed deeply.
“I swear, if everyone in the League remembers me as the girl who laughed at the funeral, I’m going to defect to another guild,” I said.
Carrie gave me a sly grin. “Oh, I’m sure some people will remember, but I think everyone else is getting hammered tonight. Don’t worry about it too much.”
We took a few wrong turns before I remembered that the membership cards could get us where we needed to go, and then we found the retail district. The shops felt like Vegas, not that I had ever been. Everything was digital, super bright, and absolutely begging for every ounce of attention. From the looks of it, competition was fierce, and some of the commodities being traded were subject to price tickers like gas or stock prices.
I scanned the shops for one that didn’t look too high end. “Come on, let’s try that place.” I led Carrie into a store called ‘Apex Armors’ with a huge stuffed bear wearing a suit of high tech armor next to the door.
Immediately upon entering, a floating robotic orb approached from out of nowhere and produced a tray with drinks on it. “Hello, and welcome to Apex Armors. May I interest you in a beverage as you browse our collection of custom tailored ballistic suits and piloting uniforms?” the robot asked. The walls were lined with digital billboards of Hercules posing in all kinds of armor and offering sly, over the shoulder smirks to the camera.
“Ah, shit. This place is gonna be expensive,” I said, doing a quick about face. I waved off the robot and retreated back to the large hall.
The next store we tried was much more my speed. It was called ‘Rector’s Outfitters’ and was starkly missing any kind of bear mascot. I hesitated as we entered, but no robot accosted us either.
The goods on display were—in comparison to Apex Armors—quite pedestrian. The armor they sold was largely in smaller pieces as opposed to form-fitting one-piece suits, and the selection was much smaller. I found a brown jacket that I felt didn’t draw too much attention and lifted it from the rack.
Immediately, a notification appeared in my vision. When I focused on the indicator, the item’s details appeared in my vision. It didn’t have a name or anything fancy, just a simple stat boost:
<<+2 armor>>
It was priced at what I considered to be a modest three hundred credits.
I put the brown jacket back on the rack and really got to looking through the inventory. Even small boosts to stats would help, and everything appeared within my means to purchase thanks to the hefty bounty contract.
After an hour of sorting through racks and trying on various gear, both of us had an armful of purchases. The best thing I found was a pair of white gloves that boosted my healing by two and aether by four. My other purchases included a set of thick pants with a dark camouflage pattern and a matching jacket. The jacket was armored on the back similar to a motorcycle outfit. The pants gave me two additional armor points, and the jacket was good for three.
Carrie had a small collection of items that could be fitted to the helmet she already owned and gave her bonuses to tech skills and hacking.
We assembled everything on the counter at the back of the store, and I rang a little silver bell off to the side. A few moments later, a robotic shopkeeper emerged from behind a gray curtain to process our order. The total came to forty-one hundred credits, which I paid with a swipe of my membership card.
Then, much to my surprise, the robot shopkeeper took all of our new gear and placed it in a small silver cube that promptly vanished. “Hey, what the hell? Did we just get robbed?”
“Calm down, we didn’t get robbed,” Carrie said, leading me by the arm away from the counter. “The gear is automatically linked to us. The system knows. You can access it in your room, in the training areas like the gym, or in the staging area before a mission. It’ll basically follow you around automatically. And if you ever want to sell stuff, you can do that right from your room. You know, if you didn’t skip class today, you’d know that kind of thing.”
“You suck.” I punched her in the arm, and she feigned offense.
“Let’s get some food and turn in. I’m tired,” Carrie said, heading for the transporters.
“You go without me. I want to test out some things in the gym and maybe grab a book or two. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Well aren’t you the dutiful little soldier,” she mocked over her shoulder.
I watched her go, then took a different transporter to the gym floor. Not too many people were there, and I didn’t recognize any of them. Always a little shy to work out given my absolute dearth of muscle and tone, that was fine by me.
First, I went for the dumbbells. Rifle Guy had showed us all a bunch of different exercises that were easy to remember. I ran through maybe a third of them, and they did feel a little easier. Though I had to admit that it could have been the placebo effect. I needed to gain a bunch of physical points, and then I would be able to really tell what kind of difference the stats made to my actual abilities. Still, I was eager to progress, and it felt good moving my arms no matter how tired and hungry I still was from the mission.
When I felt satisfied that I actually had gotten stronger, I took the transporter from level three up to level seven to check out the library. A whole bank of floating robots similar to the one at Apex Armors lined the walls, and the nearest floated over to me. “What knowledge do you seek?” it asked.
“That’s not creepy at all. Who programmed you, Shakespeare?”
The droid beeped. “My programmer was Sir Karkarov. My serial number is seven-six-nine—”
“Alright, sorry I asked. Geez.” I held up a hand, and the machine stopped. “Where will I find some books on Medics?”
“Please, follow me.”
The robot whirred, and it moved through the air with silent grace, leading me through the maze of bookshelves to a section with hundreds of titles that looked like they would serve my purposes. Not wanting to get lost, I commanded the robot to wait as I made two selections. Then I followed the drone to another section of the vast library where I was able to choose from a smaller selection of books detailing the history of Archon-6. I grabbed one and turned back to the floating droid.
“So how do I check these out? What’s the process?” I asked.
The droid opened a small bay on its front. “Please place your selections inside the transponsing core, and they will be linked to your account. You may access a linked title whenever you wish from any Hiveboard or tablet, including those found in your personal quarters. How else may I be of assistance this evening?”
I dropped the three books onto the tray, and the robot ate them. “Nice. That’s pretty cool. I’d probably read more if we had that system back home. I guess just take me back to the elevators—I mean transporters—for now. Thanks, serial number whatever.”
“My serial number is seven-six-nine…”
I didn’t pay attention as the machine rambled, directing me back through the stacks to the transporter bank. When we arrived, it once again asked me if I needed anything.
“Actually, I heard a bunch of people talking about an afterparty for Hercules tonight. Any idea which floor that would be on?”
“Master Hercules resides on floor twenty. That is all the information I possess on that particular topic,” the machine answered.
I was actually a little surprised that the robot knew anything at all about Hercules. I had assumed its knowledge base was limited to the library, but that proved wrong. “Thanks. I’ll check it out.”
I scanned my membership card over the transporter buttons and then pushed the one for floor twenty. It flashed red. “Access denied,” came a female voice from a speaker overhead.
“Well, so much for that.” I punched the fifth floor button, it blinked green, and the transporter let me off near my room a few seconds later.
Back in my room, I showered, ran a cheap plastic brush through my hair, and called up one of the Medic books from my Hiveboard: Foremeister’s Compendium of Healing Arts, Edible Herbs, and Useful Tinctures by someone with the unfortunate name of Mordecai Foremeister Junior. The fact that someone had been named such an unruly mouthful of letters and then chose to impart that same name on a child was astounding.
The book, much my surprise, materialized on my nightstand. It simply appeared into existence. I picked it up and flipped through, then found a chapter on battlefield medicine and propped myself up on some pillows for some reading.
I was four or five pages through a treatise on stitching technique for different types of blade wounds when something on my alarm clock caught my attention.
The screen blinked. It didn’t blink in a meaningful manner like another video call coming through. It flickered rapidly like it was glitching, then went back to a steady display of the time.
Too tired to deal with another of Archon-6’s unexplainable mysteries, I turned the clock toward the wall and went back to my book.